Read Death of a Winter Shaker Online
Authors: Deborah Woodworth
Death of a Winter Shaker
Elder Wilhelm Lundel
has a vision of returning the Shakers to their days of strength and glory, and there are those who would stand in his way.
Sister Elsa Pike
is a rough, hill-country woman with spiritual aspirations and a shady past. Rose is her chief rival for the position of eldress.
Seth Pike,
Elsa's son, had ridden the rails with the victim, but something split them apart. Seth is a bitter man with some secrets in his pastâone of which involves Rose.
Albert Preston,
a Shaker novitiate with his own secret past, claims not to have known the victim, yet they were seen arguing.
Sister Charity McDonald
is young, pretty, and seems unduly anxious since the murder.
Molly Ferguson
has many things a Shaker girl shouldn't haveâlipstick, perfume, face powder . . . and a secret that could shed some light on the murder.
In memory of my mother,
Virginia R. Woodworth,
who taught me to love a mystery
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As I worked on this book, many people offered me support, encouragement, and, when necessary, delicately worded criticism. I want especially to thank my writers' group: George Sorenson, Tom Rucker, Mary Logue, Andrew Hinderlie, Peter Hautman, Charles Buckman-Ellis, Marilyn Bos, and Becky Bohan. My thanks, as well, to Mary Trone for her invaluable editorial advice; to my editor, Tom Colgan; and to agent extraordinaire, Barbara Gislason. And to my family, the Woodworths; Marilyn Throne; the Schiferls; and my husband, Normâthank you for believing in me.
The North Homage Shaker village, the town and the county of Languor, Kentucky, and all their inhabitants are figments of the author's imagination. The characters live only in this book and represent no one, living or dead. By 1936, the period in which this story is told, no Shaker villages remained in Kentucky or anywhere else outside the northeastern United States. Today one small Shaker community survives, Sabbath-day Lake, near Poland Springs, Maine.
Deborah Woodworth
1996Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
A
WOMAN IN THE LONG, LOOSE DRESS OF THE
S
HAKER
sister twirled on the dew-soaked grass, her arms flung straight out from her sides. Her voluminous skirts billowed around her like a dark bell. She spun silently for a minute, then, still circling, raised her face to the sky. Her cheeks glowed with the first pink rays of sunrise.
The woman stopped and stiffened. Her body jerked as if racked by powerful spasms. Her heavy bonnet shook loose and tumbled to the ground. Within seconds, her legs collapsed beneath her. She crumpled and lay motionless, an enraptured smile on her upturned face.
Hidden in a thicket of sugar maples, a young man crouched in the dark, watching. A dry leaf tapped his shoulder as it fell toward the ground. He gasped and steadied himself against the rough, cool bark. He told himself it was the damp, autumn air making him shiver, not fear. He hadn't gotten where he was by being afraid.
As the silent figure peered into the gloomy clearing, the woman opened her eyes to the sky. She rolled to a sitting position, shook the dew from her bonnet, and retied it under her chin. She heaved herself off the ground and wiped her hands dry on her skirt. With a deep breath, she began to spin again. Words tumbled from her mouth, but not words her listener had ever
heard. He'd ridden the rails with all sorts of folks, had heard German and French and even some Gaelic, and this was like none of them and all of them together.
Her watcher drew back into the darkness. Excitement made him careless, and he cracked a twig. Stifling a curse, he turned slowly and peered back into the clearing. The woman still twirled, heedless of any noise but her own strange language. The young man slipped away, smiling to himself. What he had seen could fit right into his plans, he thought. He nearly whistled but stopped himself just in time. He did not notice the third pair of eyes, watching him from the darkness.
Y
OUNG
G
ENNIE
M
ALONE'S
LONG, DARK BLUE
S
HAKER
cloak flapped behind her in the brisk wind as she wove through the kitchen garden on her way to the Herb House. Gennie could never resist a garden. During the summer, she had taken this path every day, no matter where she was assigned to work. She would brush her dress against the sweet lavender or chew on a sprig of spearmint when she thought no one was watching. By this time of year, the kitchen sisters had picked and preserved most of the vegetables and herbs, so Gennie had little to sniff or taste.
Glancing around her, the girl paused to lift the edge of her bonnet and pull a few locks of auburn hair free to curl around her face. Then she ran the last few steps through the wet morning grass to reach the Herb House. Sister Rose would follow her soon and expect her to be elbow-deep in dried caraway and dill seeds. Rose might overlook a few strands of hair in ringlets, but she would not tolerate sloth.
The white, clapboard building stood well back from the unpaved path that cut through the Shaker village. Half-hidden behind the Laundry and surrounded on two sides by herb fields, the Herb House felt like a secret hideaway to Gennie. She swept aside her skirt and eased open the door, always left unlocked. A warm cloud of strongly scented air enveloped her as she
climbed the well-swept stairway to the second-floor drying room.
She paused halfway up the stairs to play her favorite guessing game. Inhaling deeply, she could recognize some of the fragrances, even this late in the drying process. She could distinguish pungent rosemary from the sweet rose petals, sage from lemon balm, all mellowed by the smell of earth and hay. That morning the air was especially sweet, almost sickly sweet by the time she reached the second-floor landing. Though it had not rained during the past week, the humidity must have been high enough to cause some decay.
Gennie stepped inside the drying room, her favorite place in the whole village. She'd live in here if Sister Rose would let her. Thick bunches of herbs hung upside down in rows from every possible peg, hook, and wooden drying rack. Long screens spread across tables held the smaller and more delicate items such as rose petals and thyme. The herb crops had been so full this year that the Society's carpenter, Brother Albert, had hung long hooks from the rafters to dry the excess. Closing her eyes, she flung out her arms and twirled around, enjoying the faint crackle and the release of fragrances as her fingers tapped a few nearby bundles of herbs.
When she opened her eyes, Gennie saw one loose bunch of catnip on the floor a few yards from her. She felt a prick of guilt, but quickly realized it was too far for her to have knocked the herbs from their high hook. As the stems dried and shrank, they sometimes slipped from the string used to bind them in bunches.
She'd better move the catnip to a safe place. Scooping it up, she ducked under a row of long tarragon stalks and found a drying screen covered with daisylike chamomile flowers. There was just room for the catnip.
Rose would be along soon, time to get to work. Gennie unhooked a bundle of feathery dillweed and made for the large worktable under the east window.
The table was long and solidly built. The sisters often sat around it to crumble and package seeds and dried herbs. On warm days, they would open the window, and she could hear them singing as they worked. The rising sun splashed light across the length of the table, across round metal tins waiting to be filled with dillweed and lavender buds.
And across the still form of a young man. Gennie stared at his two bare, pigeon-toed feet. The dillweed crumbled in her clenched fists and trickled to the floor.
Slowly, she stepped closer to the still form. The cloying, moldy smell she had noticed earlier grew stronger as she neared him. She didn't want to breathe, but her pounding heart forced her to gulp the fetid air. She yanked a fresh handkerchief from her pocket and held it to her nose and mouth.
She clutched at the hope that the man might only be ill or injured. She might still be able to help him; she had to go to him, check for injuries. She forced herself to approach the man's face. His skin was grayish, his curly blond hair matted and dirty. Clearly, no one could help him now.
Gennie knew him. He was Johann Fredericks, a handsome and charming drifter who had arrived in North Homage about two weeks earlier. Gennie and her roommate, Molly, had noticed him right away at mealtime, eating silently across the dining room with the brethren. He had been quite a treat to look at. Of course, Shaker girls were not supposed to do any such thing. But they had, and giggled about it together later that evening in their retiring room.
Now Johann, though not a Believer, wore the plain, dark work clothes of the Shaker brethren. His trousers were too short for his long legs, revealing several inches of dirty ankle. Dirt clung to every visible part of his body. His bare toes looked as if they had been dredged through the mud. Gennie stared, horrified, at his grimy hands. They were crossed over his chest in a gesture of
final peace. Beneath the hands lay a bouquet of dried herbs and flowers, tied with a frayed bit of twine.
Gennie backed away and stumbled from the room.
T
HE WORRIED EXPRESSION ON
S
ISTER
R
OSE
C
ALLAHAN'S
pale, lightly freckled face softened for a moment as she gazed out her office window and saw Gennie skim around the limestone corner of the Trustees' Office.
Gennie was her favorite of the young girls being reared by the North Homage Shakers. Rose hoped she would choose to sign the covenant and join the Society of Believers when she reached eighteen in a few months. Bright, young Believers were all too rare these days. But Rose remembered what it was like to be seventeen, though it was nearly half her life ago. She remembered how it felt to be lured by the bright, false promises of the world.
Rose turned back to her desk, shaking her head at the memory of her own youth. A few tendrils of curly red hair pulled loose from her white cotton cap. She pushed them back under the fabric with a practiced movement and reached for the cup of rose hip and lemon balm tea she'd brewed for herself in the small Trustees' Office kitchen. The tea had grown cold, like the air in her office, but it brought comfort. Like work and song and prayer, the daily taste of the tea, sweet and rich, bound her to the Shaker life.
She had no regrets, she told herself. The call to become a Believer, the call that had brought her back
to the Shakers seventeen years earlier, was as clear and strong as ever. All the stronger, she believed, because she had known worldly love before choosing to devote her life to the Society.
Some of the other sisters believed that any venture into the world was dangerous. But Rose disagreed. If a young woman belonged in the world, she should be there. If she then chose the Society over the world, knowing what she was giving up, she'd follow the teachings of their foundress, Mother Ann, through eternity. But Rose knew only too well how few young people chose the Society over families of their own. She had watched North Homage's alarming decline for many years.